This Is What Happens When You Completely Lose Yourself In Love

I have experience looking for some things that I lost but I could not muster the reasons why I have lost them in the first place. I thought I placed them in some place I could keep an eye but still they have escaped from my watch. Of course, I am not talking about some random stuff like a pen, my eyeglasses and scissors or things that are tangible. These are all about feelings – emotions that I have kept to myself. This is about things that locked my heart up for a long time that I said to myself, “I have nobody to blame for all this shit but myself.” Whatever happened, really? Whatever happened to us and the relationship we tried to fight for? I wish looking for damn right answers was just as easy as falling in love with you all over again.

There are times that I just keep looking back to those old summer romances and school puppy love stories that we shared. Over the years after we broke up, I realized that my idea of romance and love has dramatically changed. I am not sure if this is good for me or this is just the bittersweet taste of break-up talking. I no longer imprison myself to that suffocating mindset that somebody can only promise to love me forever, that she will make me feel perfect enough that everything and everyone else fade into the vivid light.

Some friends told me that I should start dating again. I keep telling myself I don’t need to for the time being because I feel completely fine living the life I wanted. Besides, looking for somebody to love will only bring me to our old little dimension of love itself. Just like how we fell into each other, I honestly do not know how we drifted apart. I honestly do not know how to start all over again. There are moments that I want to submit to the fact that life happened, maybe that’s the reason why. But I am still afraid of love. The idea of it will just beat the crap out me even more.

Trust me. I’ve been trying very hard to leave all that past behind us. I know that I am still a work in progress, even six years after we parted ways. There are just moments when a minute feels like a year, especially when thoughts of you came rushing in.

Whatever happened to our goddamn hearts? We started with a fire-like affection for each other, the minute I kissed you when we had one of those sleepovers. We held hands under the table because you won’t tell our friends that thing I was dying to tell the world. Finally, we were official. It was amazing but now it feels like soul-shattering.

Whatever happened to our dreams? Being one of those geeky science students, we dreamed of going to the city university together and take up our undergrads; would make a love bridge between two adjacent buildings of Sciences and Liberal Arts, occupying our own benches and scattering our books on the field grass and passing notes until midnight before we head up to our dorms. I guess that part of us can be one of those cheesy John Green books we’ve ever read.

Whatever happened to those late-night catfights we slept over with? You love Math, I love English. You crunched numbers, I wrote letters. Albert was your hero, William was mine. The only thing we had in common: we loath the same people. They said that people who love each other should not let the sun come down without patching things up. We used to sleep with our frustrations as pillows and cuddle up on those sheets of whatever school-work. We were the ideal couple until the idea of it faded away.

Whatever happened to the old good music and sad songs we listened to with a pair of earphones? We both made a sketch of how we’d look like at a short distance and you hated me for using it online. We both loved The Beatles and George Harrison and that Abbey Road song he wrote. I stood there watching you close your eyes while I play The Smiths from my phone. You were so beautiful I could not paint it on my mind. I wish we are still like those songs: old, mature but flying in space-time.

Remembering all these, I can no longer imagine how I got so broken that I could not see what lies ahead. I kept on thinking that somehow, I could magically skip that grieving period, that the mere thought of you could drown my soul in flames. I couldn’t get myself to eat, to sleep and to bathe. I was telling myself it was over for my little poor heart.

I knew I was wrong but I still hate to accept that we are over; that I should keep moving even the love that we shared will forever remain. I have no idea what was up with me. It was more than six years and I still grieve. I am no longer sure of anything that lies ahead. I am still trying to get over you.
But I am sure of one thing: I may not get back what we had but I will fall in love again, maybe not with you anymore but with somebody else I do not know yet (or somebody I already met). Who knows? I can get something more than what we had, and who knows? I might lose it once more.